Nature’s temper is flaring;
her patience and forbearance
scorched, her furnace
is now conflagrating,
the glow of indignant anger
of souls grieving,
and wretched cries failing
to spark the conscience
and set off the clarion call.
Like frogs that in water slowly heated
lose the urge and urgency
to leap clear till
it is all too late,
human beings with egos
bigger than themselves
have been ever so slowly
roasted, baked, stewed, with echoes
of possibly unknown worlds,
their clever species long extinct.
While the fires that are raging
will give a short respite,
like the inundating tides
merely seeming to be receding,
the elements staying in disequilibrium
the ineluctable final course
will be set in motion, the thoroughfares,
the promenades, the malls
becoming eerily empty,
along with law, honour and decency.
Jeewan Ramlugun
